Translation, its varieties.

The subject matter of translation science

The main goal of translation – to transform a text in the source language into a text in the target language.

Ideal translation is accurate (reproducing as close as possible), natural, communicative.

Translation – reproduction of the source language message by means of the receptor language.

One shouldn’t confuse the notion of text and message. The same text may produce different messages for different recipients. This is quite common in monolingual communication and quite true in bilingual.

Communication is never taken for granted, if doesn’t happen by itself, because the message sent is not always the message received.

Unlike ordinary monolingual communication, translation is a multidimensional phenomenon.

It involves a variety of participants:

• Author of the test;

• Translator;

• Recipient;

• Language systems;

• Cultures;

• Text itself as an independent unity.

Different classification of translation that are based on different grounds:

• Variety of speech;

• Kind of performer

• Kind of recipient;

• Functional style.

The simplest classification is the one depending on the performer:

• Man made translation

• Machine translation

Depending on the variety of speech activity the process of rendering the message has two major varieties:

• Written translation;

• Interpreting of the message by means of spoken language

Interpreting has a number of varieties:

• At sight translation;

• Consecutive;

• Simultaneous;

Depending on the type of rec. interpretation can be classed as:

• Conference interpretation performed special equipment for a number of people;

• Escort interpretation which is performed for an individual or a small group of people.

Translations are also classed depending on the functional styles of the source language text. Accordingly one can speak of the following types:

• Scientific prose translation;

• Official and business documents;

• News items;

• Belles-lettres;

• Political discourse;

• Religious text translation;

From the linguistic perspective the most important of the above class is the difference the written translation and all kinds of interpretation.

The principal distinction between consecutive and simultaneous interpretation is the lag – the interval between the moment in speech and its reproduction in the target language (almost zero in the simultaneous interpretation).

Given the different conditions, the time lag in simultaneous interpretation, the criteria of translation equivalent differ. Respectively differ the strategies and techniques of translation.

Proper understanding of the nature of translation and adequate selection of translation methods is impossible without taking into account information loses. They’re inseparable part even in monolingual communication.

In translation and interpretation there’re additional factors incurring losses. These are:

• Linguistic and cultural differences as well as human factor limitations on part of both the speaker, translator and recipient.

Interpreter’s job is to establish communication between the speaker and the audience. It’s exclusively that the quality of interpretation has to be judged.

Reception of the text in both monolingual communication and translation very much depends on the predictability of the oncoming word and phrases. We forecast with a great probability what’s going to follow after certain type of grammatical construction or certain word. Since many elements of the utterance are to the certain degree predictable for the receiver, therefore they can be described as redundant.

According to professor Chornov: redundancy and predictability are fairly subjective. The ability to predict depends on the person’s education, age, ethnic origin and general outlook. That’s why the message should be tailed to suit the communicative anticipations of the target audience. Chornov emphasizes the importance of element of prediction or anticipation during the comprehension process and sees it essential in simultaneous interpretation.

The interpreter foresees the fragments of text and sometimes translates them as though ahead of the speaker verifying it in the process of communication and making all the necessary corrections. Using prediction as an interpretation strategy there is a risk of making mistakes. People usually imply more than they say. But the implication may often be too folded and one can never be sure which meaning prevails.

A powerful tool of enhancing interpreter’s performance is overcoming the restrictions imposed by the time limitation and psychological stress. The primary objectives of interpreter notations are precision words (names of places, dates).

Translation science and it’s interrelation with linguistic and nonlinguistic science.

According to Barkudarow the subject matter of the linguistic theory of translation is the scientific description of the process of translation as an interlingual transformation.

Translation theory is a complex science including a number of interrelated disciplines: general theory of translation, special theory of translation, style theory of translation, history of translation, criticism, mythology of teaching translators and interpreters.

General theory discusses the phenomenon of translation as the interaction of two major processes: the analysis of the original text and the target language text, and synthesis of a new message through employments of certain translation strategies and techniques.

Professor Miran suggests that there’s also the stage of verification of the synthesized model against the source target content, situational and background information, resulting in the generation of the final text.

Special theory addresses basically the same issues specifying the findings of general theory for an individual part of languages and specific varieties of translation. They interact with the style theories of translation that view the process and the results of translation from the perspective of individual functional style.

Translation science is rather a descriptive than representative science. It maintains close links with a number of linguistic and nonlinguistic disciplines, first and foremost with contrastive linguistic.

Contrastive linguistics focuses upon the language as a system perspective of the comparative study while translation science investigates the functional aspects of language in speech.

According to the findings of contrastive linguistic the correlations between the lexical and grammatical forms:

• Complete coincidence;

• Partial coincidence;

• Complete discrepancy.

Translation science and psycho-linguistics

Psycho-linguistics deals with the ways of generating speech. It’s influenced by the nature of the translator’s bilingualism. Psycho-linguistics establishes that natural bilingualists are less able for translating than subordinate bilinguaglists. Translation requires the ability of translator to view the source language text from the target language cultural and linguistic perspective.

Different views on the definition of translation. Approaches of translation

According to the understandings of contemporary scholars translation is a process of transformation speech messages in the source language into the speech messages in the target language under condition that their sense and communication intention remains unchanged.

If we take a dictionary definition of a word we will see that translation and interpretation mean not just the change of language.

Preceding from this understanding of translation there are 3 varieties of it:

• Intra-lingual translation (children’s language explanations of scientific matters to non-specialists, explaining idioms);

• Inter-lingual translation;

• Inter-semiotic translation (sign language);

Yakobson emphasizes that what is meant is more than just transcoding the message, it also presupposes reshaping of the content of message molding it into a different form which may introduce the mixture of pragmatic, linguistic, and sociologic characters.

This is important for proper understanding the essence of equivalence. Many neologisms and professionalisms require interlingual translation: civil partnership – homosexual marriage in G.B.

Technically the transformations of the source language text in this case are very much similar to interlingual translatioin in Yakobson’s sense, it’s like renaming. Certain elements can be changed to be understood in the target language.

Another situation when you may find intralingual translation quite useful is when you’re in a difficulty how to translate certain grammatical structure. You may try transforming it into another grammatical form within the source text first and then transcoding it into the target language:

E.g. the last thing I felt like doing was dancing –I didn’t want to dance at all.

e.g. The bomb left in a car near new street station could have caused serious loss of life if it had successfully detonated, police said. – the explosion was prevented.

The views on the key notion of translation theory such as equivalence, translation unit, adequacy differ from one linguist to another.

The human translation theories may be divided into 3 main groups which quite conventionally may be called transformational, denotative and communicative approaches.

According to the transformational approach translation is viewed as transformation of objects and structures of the source language into those of the target language. The transformational approach suggests that in any language there are certain regulations: syntactic, morphologic and word building structures which may be successfully matched with their analogues in the target language.

The transformational approach forms the basis of machine translation based on the principle of matching forms of the languages involved in translation. Since translation is multidimensional process, the numerous definitions specify (emphasize) various aspects of this process.

John Kotnord emphasizes that translation is the replacement of textual material of one language by equivalent translation method into another. And the texts are equivalent when they reflect the same text situation. His definition reflects the so-called denotative approach to translation which is based on the description that lies behind the source language and target language texts respectively.

Nayda and Yaybor stresses that translator must strive for the reproduction of the message rather than the conservation of the form of the utterance.

Translation consists in reproducing in receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language in terms of meaning and style.

Otto Kade’s communicational theory of translation suggests the following definition: translation as an act of special bilingual communication in which translator acts as a special communicational intermediary making it possible to understand a message sent in a different language.

This emphasizes that translation depends not only on the difference of the languages as systems but on human factor limitations as well.

Denotative approach is to a great extent interpretative and reconstructive and in many cases can lead to considerable misreading of the original and erroneous admixtures to its content.

Denotative model of translation proceeds from the supposition that the surrounding reality is basically common for all people inhabiting the earth. But the description of the same situation made by different people hardly ever coincide in detail. They are much influenced by the experience and knowledge of the subject as whole as other specifically of the translator’s background.

Denotative approach makes translator too much dependant on the knowledge of the subject. Denotative approach as well as transformational approach have both their limitations.

The denotative approach is instrument for quick and complete memorizing of the target language message and its reproduction in the source language with minimum interlingual interference.

“Communication” is a word that often appears in the definition of translation. Communication is the transfer of information or getting the message from one participant of the communication act to the other.

The message sent is not always the message received. We do not think in words but in images. Getting the message consists of 2 major stages: decoding and understanding.

According to communicative approach translation is a message sent by a translator to a particular user and adequacy of translation depends on similarity of their background information rather than only on linguistic correctness.

Communicative approach gives us the ultimate advice when translating or interpreting use any approach that is appropriate and makes communication effective in given conditions with an eye to particular limitations on such factors as the variety of speech cultural differences and recipient.